


Faded Hearts And Damaged Souls

by wickedgal08



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2103921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedgal08/pseuds/wickedgal08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles centered around our favourite characters. All pairings will be written about, canon and AU. Aim to post one a day if I can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. uncovered

It takes her months to get rid of the nightmares, and even then they never really fade. 

The reality is, her life is a nightmare, and you can’t wake up from that. All you can do is keep surviving, no matter what the personal cost might be. 

As an exercise, her one time therapist advised her to write a list each day of all the positives her life has, just to give herself some perspective, to remind her that what she has will always outweigh what she’s lost. She keeps up that exercise until her list dwindles down to just a handful of names, and even then those names eventually get crossed off one by one. 

She cries in the shower and leaves her sheets dry as a bone to hide the evidence that she’s falling apart. She forever enters her shower one person, only to leave as someone else, someone with a little less life inside. But all the same, she finds that smile to show the mirror, tries to convince herself it could be a lot worse (how could it though? really?) and goes to sleep putting nice images in her own mind, constructing memories she honestly isn’t sure are real, they just make her feel good to contemplate. 

With each loss comes a heavier heart, a darker soul.

She eventually convinces herself she’s being punished for something, that it’s her fault somehow, that surviving that CAR CRASH was the worst thing she’s ever done.

She tries to dispel these dark thoughts, but they grip hold of her tormented mind with too much ease. Sometimes she thinks she might go mad like Ric, except not from possessing multiple personalities, but from sheer grief. But she carries on surviving, determined never to go down without a fight.

(Sometimes when she looks at the mirror, she feels her mother tucking her hair out of her face, brushing her lips against her cheek, urging her to be brave in dulcet tones as sweet as a lullaby)

Instead of having a list of things - people - she has to be thankful for, she alters the list’s purpose, so it now reads as being a list of people she has to survive for.

Of course, Jeremy is on the list, but there’s a name above his that takes precedence over everybody else. 

Her own.


	2. (learn to) begin again

Forging a new relationship in the ashes of the old is an unbelievably difficult task, they learn. 

Romance is off the cards, initially, as they try and gather some semblance of who they once were before all this drama entered their lives. Luckily, for Tyler, having his werewolf status back in place helps create the illusion he’s back to who he once was before Klaus snapped his neck and effectively ruined everything that was good about his life. 

Unfortunately, the empty house and the broken heart he nurses shatters the illusion. He can get past the fact Caroline slept with Klaus - barely, and even then he still struggles - but he can’t get past the fact there’s a room his parents both slept in which remains untouched. It actually haunts him, like a room is physically capable of manifesting itself a spectral form. 

In these moments, when he trembles and grieves all over again, Caroline is right there, caressing his cheeks, holding his head against her chest, whispering soothing words which gradually sink in. 

It’s times like these which make him hate himself for walking away; she gave him the choice - the ultimatum - to stay, and he chose revenge over her. He chose a lifetime of persecution, of mutual hatred, of various attempts at getting revenge over a golden haired girl with the brightest smile and the biggest heart, and he will never stop punishing himself for that.

Maybe in her own way that was what she’d been doing with Klaus - punishing him for abandoning her. It’s all he can really summon up as an explanation that stops him from actually hating her, although actually as time goes by he finds that it doesn’t hurt as much. 

Klaus stole one afternoon with her. He has a plethora of memories with her that he never, for one moment, stopped treasuring. 

Maybe they don’t have forever anymore - he’s not sure what his mortality status is at the moment, only that if he is mortal again he has no plans to change that, at least not right now - but they have right now. He doesn’t know what they are, only what they could be again, but for now he’ll settle for the fact they’ve returned to the shores of a friendship which had preceded their romance. 

He’ll take it in a heartbeat every time.

This time, he won’t walk away. He knows the price for doing so.


	3. no place like home

Sometimes it takes being driven from your home to realise how much a place could mean to you.

Exile is not something he’s used to; as a vampire, Stefan knows part of the role, so to speak, involves no limitations. You can go anywhere, any time, and never have to worry about death snatching you by the heels. As the ripper, he’d been quite used to indulging himself, not concerning himself with morals or anything of the like.

Here, though, on the outskirts of a town he can honestly say even with his vast knowledge of geography he’s never heard of, for the first time in a long time he feels mortal. Empty. Without a purpose.

That second one he can attribute to losing his brother, but it staggers him that even as an immortal creature, he is still weighted down with petty concerns such as knowing where he belongs. Right now, he hasn’t a clue where he belongs anymore. Mystic Falls, for all its fault, has always been his home. He’s not always liked it, and it’s housed more horrors than a gore filled horror movie saga, but it’s familiar, and filled with memories, although most are unhappy ones. 

He takes a long drink from a bottle of bourbon, channeling Damon, missing and hating his brother in equal amounts. It frustrates him he still cannot pinpoint his exact feelings regarding Damon, only that his loss has torn a great big cavity in his chest he cannot fill no matter how much alcohol he drinks. 

Better alcohol, though, than blood. 

The temptation, all the same, is there. It lies dormant in his blood, waiting patiently for something to tip him over the edge so that he succumbs to the ripper.

But he doesn’t give in. 

He just grieves, aching for some semblance of normality. In the end, despite his bravado, he suspects that’s what his brother wanted too.

Now neither of them will ever have that again. Maybe it was foolish for them to believe they could.


	4. no pain unshared

As he dies - for real this time - couple of thoughts flash through his mind. Not his life story of course, that would be far too cliched for his liking, but a couple of regrets that stand out.

Firstly, that he never told Jenna the truth, that his need to protect her overshadowed the fact she could handle herself even with the scariest of truths. He can’t help thinking if he’d told her sooner, she would still be alive, but that’s not a train of thought he’s willing to pursue anytime soon.

Secondly, he regrets not doing enough to protect Elena and Jeremy, and for phasing out on them after Jenna’s death when he could’ve been accruing more time with them. He will miss them like they were his own children (and who, really, is to say they aren’t? they’re as good as). 

He succumbs to death, but not gently. 

He dies with the knowledge his own death is brought about by the death of Elena’s, and even with his nastier, more hateful persona fixed in place, he still feels that loss. As he dies, so does that persona, and then he can grieve a little more. Of course, she doesn’t die, not really, but he watches her struggle with her vampire life, and he aches to comfort her. 

The thing with Elena, he’s starting to realise, is despite her sweet nature, her intelligence, and her protective instincts is that life will never stop dealing her cruel blows, which knock her down time and time again, yet she continues to stand BACK UP, even if each time she loses a little more confidence that she’ll be able to do it again. 

Jeremy has always been a wild card, someone he’s not been able to predict given the fact he deals with life’s tragedies and dramas quite differently each time; sometimes he’ll be resigned to the fact his life is utterly screwed up, and other times he’ll barely repress rage at the fact that he shouldn’t have to live like this. 

More than once, Alaric has watched him pack a suitcase and then unpack it with just as much fervour because he acted impulsively on the idea of leaving only for common sense to kick in at the last moment. 

These kids shouldn’t have to live this way, but they are, and that is what prevents him from moving on. They have to have some semblance of normality in life before he feels he can leave forever. He was a crappy guardian when he was alive, so he attempts to amends by being a better guardian from the other side, although there really isn’t much he can do.

When the veil drops, he briefly gets time to visit, and it’s glorious. The ache in his chest, if anything, intensifies because he knows soon the moment will pass and this will be just another memory, something he can revisit in lonely hours but never recreate. The thing with the other side is that it’s perpetually lonely; you can’t really interact with anyone else, hence the fact it’s been a long time since he’s interacted with both Jeremy and Elena, despite Jeremy’s new status as part of the deceased, a fact he’d had to bitterly swallow whilst watching Elena’s entire world shatter before her eyes.

One of the memories which will never leave him is watching Elena drop to her knees, sobbing her heart out, whilst simultaneously begging for someone to make the pain of losing her BROTHER stop. Never in his life has he watched a woman cry with that depth of emotion before, and never does he want to again.

When he disappears again, it’s with the knowledge that he’s at least done the best he’s could with the life he’s been given. Possibly, he might resurface again, and get to make some more precious memories before he disappears forever, but it’s looking like Elena will be okay now she has Damon.

Despite his moral support, he still questions that particular life decision because if given any other choice, he would’ve urged Elena to remain single and just enjoy her life without favouring one Salvatore or the other; that, in his opinion, would give her the better life, but who is he to judge on questionable partners when his first love turned out to be obsessed with the supernatural and hellbent on eventually leaving him to be part of the eternally damned.

Alaric doesn’t know what his own future holds, let alone anyone else’s, but equipped with a friend with severely skewed morals - if any at all - and a couple of vaguely inherited teenagers he would call his own in a heartbeat, even in a court of law, he’s absolutely sure of one thing.

His life could be a hell of a lot worse.

Even if, strictly speaking, he doesn’t have one anymore.


	5. this woman's work

Bonnie will never admit it, but she has attempted to leave on a number of occasions; each time she reaches the sign saying 'you are now leaving Mystic Falls' and never goes any further. It's like that sign physically prevents her from leaving. 

A number of things have triggered her attempts at leaving. Perhaps the most trivial reason - yet the most profound, when you really think about it - was when she woke up one morning and looked in the mirror, recoiling at the sight of an ingrained line along her forehead you could almost mistake to be a wrinkle. 

It wasn't - isn't - a wrinkle, but it caused her to panic at the idea that magic and the toxicity of the environment she currently resides in had started to age her. instantly, she'd been in her car, pushing it to its top speed, her heart in her mouth the entire journey until common sense had finally caught up.

She's not one of these girls who worries about wrinkles and age lines - she's not Caroline, in other words - but she is worried that this town is wearing her down. She feels about forty, although that could be to do with the fact she's constantly pushing herself to new extremes when dealing with spells. A seventeen year old girl is always supposed to act older, not feel it, but if she's counting all the ways she's no longer - in spirit - a teenager, this is far down the list of signs she should be concerned with.

Bonnie wonders if Abby went through a similar sort of mid-life type of crisis, and that's what propelled her to leave. If so, perhaps this is the closest she can get to understanding and forgiving her mother's actions. The business of magic is a grueling one, and it is like having a full time job that way, except she can never leave it in search of better pursuits. 

All this should make her a bitter person, and she's astounded that she's not. Maybe she's resigned, that would be the better word to sum her up. A part of her criticises her feeling this way, insisting she should be happy to help, eager to help, not constantly moaning about her lot in life. 

Isn't that what makes me human, though? Bonnie questions. Isn't that what reminds me I'm a teenager? The complaining that life is unfair, the unquenchable thirst to get out and be somebody completely new, the freaking out because I'm getting older and yet I'm pretty sure I've accomplished nothing with my life so far? 

What teenager though has to fight death on a daily basis, or has to keep monsters - actual monsters - alive just because their friends have affections for them, or because they've turned into them themselves?

Bonnie wishes she could stop herself thinking this way, but there's a dark part of her which urges her to cut everybody off and go fend for herself. 

Luckily, the rest of her tells that voice to shut up, that her friends have done just as much for her, as she has for them, even though she knows that isn't quite true. She knows in her heart of hearts if her friends had the power she has, they would fight the world in her place, and let her rest her injured wings, like she's a fragile sparrow constantly thrust into a war zone even though it doesn't belong there, and that's what keeps her from leaving.

Magic will be the end of her, this she knows, and she endures each day knowing it could be her last, but if her last breath allows her friends to take many more, it'll all be worth it, and that she believes with her whole heart.


	6. love changes everything

There is something about the start of a relationship that no film or piece of literature can ever describe. It is like walking on glass, on a structure so liable to break it is infinitely more precious because of that fact, yet at the same time equivalent to standing in the rain as the sun shines above you, because the rarity of such a moment - of having both good fortune and bad luck briefly combine to form an infinitely more beautiful phenomenon (the rainbow) - floods your lungs with such joy that it ironically takes your breath away.

Stefan and Elena’s first moments are filled with all the cliches of new love; their lives start to knit together through shy and curious looks, and tentative touches, through awkward first hugs which evolve into deep cuddles, right to tentative kisses which burn like wild fire on the skin.

She slips her hand into his without even thinking as they walk to class to class. He’ll shrug off his jacket when he feels her shiver beside him. When his vampire features start to show, she looks him in the eye and doesn’t flinch from the moment his veins pop out, to the moment the flicker of a darker soul flees from his eyes. When she learns another horrifying or disturbing truth about her past, he is quick to fold her into his arms. 

They keep each other afloat on a stormy ocean of uncertainty.

"I love you," she says one night, and it comes apropos of nothing, until he realises she’s asleep, and the words have fallen off her tongue in a dreamy haze. 

He kisses her head, and holds her closer.

Some truths never need saying more than once, but there is a certain gratification you get from hearing them all the same.

Their fights come from places of deep anguish and anger; when they hurt over harsh words spoken, it’s only because certain truths resonate deep within their broken hearts. They are broken people, and what knits them together is the fact they are wholeheartedly trying to fix themselves. Love like this seems perfect on the outside, easy, but it’s just as hard as every other part of life.

Even the purest of loves can hide the darkest of secrets; secrets which threaten their happiness at every turn. For her, it’s the cupboard full of skeletons her family has accrued over the years (metaphorically speaking of course), skeletons including her uncle’s true identity, and her adoption. For him, it’s the ripper, who shows his sinister colours every time the scent of blood drifts under his nose. He has to fight him every day, has to fight levels of guilt he cannot possibly ever make her understand.

But when he’s with her, bathing in her compassion and loving smile, he thinks his chances at holding back the ripper get stronger a little more each day.

And when she’s around him, encompassed in his strong but TENDERembrace, drenched in the love he radiates every damn time he looks at her, she thinks her odds at making it through another day emotionally unscathed get a little higher. 

And when they’re together, nothing seems as scary (except the demons which personally haunt them).

He envisions spending forever with her, even though it may be a little premature to think so far ahead, and the dream of that future quells the nightmares which haunt him every night until he wakes up, the guilt wrecking him worse than any hangover possibly conceived. He needs that future to give him a trail of tomorrows to follow. 

She envisions growing up with him, the thought of turning into a vampire a faint one, but not a route she is eager to pursue. The thought of being dependent of blood, of risking your heart, soul and morals for the sake of immortality with the one she loves sounds unreasonable, at least right now. 

All the same, every future she conceives has Stefan in it, in some shape or form. She can’t envision letting him go. 

(Sooner or later though, they both learn the hardest lesson love has to offer: that the course of true love, as well as never being smooth, can sometimes come to an abrupt halt, leaving you peering over the edge of an uncertain future, as you contemplate the dreadful possibility of letting go and seeing if you can make it on your own two feet).

In love or out of it, however, Stefan and Elena soon come to find there’s no staying away from each other, and that is both their blessing and their curse.


	7. between these lonely hours

He awaits her awakening with numerous painful breaths.

  
At first he counts the days, and nights, as if like sleep counting numerous items away will allow him to fall into a temporary coma in which time will skip ahead to his happily ever after. He envisions, dreams, prays for the time to run like sand through his fingers; quickly and softly.

  
But time doesn't work that way; it never has. It drags its heels, kicks him when he's already down, plays havoc with his mind; it comes to a standstill during the hellish moments, those moments where he forgets why he is still holding onto life and not desiccating in some tomb somewhere, and then it slows down. He is driven mad by how long sixty, seventy years, can suddenly feel to an immortal, who ordinarily would not bat so much as an eyelid at six or seven decades.

  
Elena is safe, and tucked away in a place that holds significance to both of them - Georgia, if you want to be precise, specifically in the cellar of where Bree's bar used to be - and eventually she'll be moved somewhere else. He keeps her on the road - albeit with Tyler, to give himself the impression she's still living in the world, even if she's travelling without him. It's a delusion that feeds his twisted soul, because the alternative is to contemplate how godawful a situation she's in right now; encased in a coffin but not even dead - rather the opposite, in the prime of her life, in top health aside from the magical coma - with the future of waking up to a world that has not only endured decades of life, but also erased the lives of certainly at least two of her dearest family and friends. He hates that this is what her future is.

And he hates he can do nothing to change it.

  
He makes plans without her, for their future together, and he almost feels silly compiling these plans, because there's a dark thought - an insecure moment - where he honestly thinks she may wake up and her feelings for him were nothing but a flash of dizzying fantasy, that maybe she'll recall all the horrible things he's done and retract their entire past together. She's done it once already, if only for a completely different reason, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that she may do it again. But Damon is nothing, if not naively hopeful, and he's learned to be that way because of her. Naive optimism might get you hurt in the long run, but it can also sustain you and he'll need all he can get if he is to endure decades without her by his side.

  
He checks on his bar, and redecorates it every few years or so, and makes sure he contributes monthly to the medical school beside it, to make sure it still survives in sixty, seventy years. He sells a good portion of his stock of valuable wine to an eccentric collector, and creates two bank accounts to split the money into. One is for them, a means of surviving as he still completely plans on becoming human with her, which means after he does so he can no longer rely on his compulsion to get what he wants.

  
He'd rather die than tell anyone else this, but the second account is for their future children - if that is still something she wants after she awakes. He still believes fatherhood is a foreign concept, but he can't deny a secret longing to have the opportunity to try it. With Katherine, they'd never even had that conversation for the pure fact it was understood that it would never be an option for them, and he was fine with that. Katherine was the equivalent of a firework; a burst of excitement and colour in an otherwise dull world, but once the illusion faded, so did the novelty.

  
He prepares all of this, and, once the threat of the heretics has been removed , he says goodbye to his brother and Mystic Falls, and disappears.

  
The world is something he's visited before, many times, but this time he goes into it as a determined, vulnerable, lonely yet patience man whose heart he has locked away in a coffin with the love of his life. He won't need it again until it opens and she's back in his arms, and he knows she'll keep it safe.

  
She always has done.


End file.
